Hey, nice package. Where'd you get those big ole gourds,   I'd really like to drink from one of those babies. 

Hard-skinned Gourds (Lagenaria ,Siceraria  - CALABASH - these babies

you want to plant these babies as soon as the risk of frost has passed, then when they are fully grown, they will get hard, you want to pick em when you can't push your

fingernail through the skin, also, you can just leave em all out in the field, with Jay until the stems get all dried out.

anyway, you want to leave a good bit of stem and runner on the top, you can cut it shorter after it has cured,

if the gourd is damaged, like Jay, or Phillip, you can just toss em out, cause they will spoil, and are of no use to anyone, they are a waste of space, just get rid of them ,or let them stand out in the field, or masturbate in the hay barn, there is nothing more that can be done.

set outside, in a dry area, not in direct sun, but partial is fine, if you can hang them, that's even better, but some of those Sutler boys will likely shoot at them, try and hide them around the back of the chicken coop if possible. If not, go out and turn em, you don't want any of it getting soft like Phillips' brain.

Just set em out, if Jay is peeing in the field now is a good time to ask him to zip it up, and go play elsewhere, he will not hurt the gourds, at least not until you drill a hole in the

out the insides. Gourds make perfect cereal bowls for kids and can be used to store or sell salve.  If you make your own salve, then it is hard to do better than filling them gourds with it.  Obviously, this natural packaging can also be used for cereal bowls or Martin Houses.  Martins are funny, so you will need at least 4 or 6 gourds to attract them,  I like to make the holes about 1.75 to just under 2 inches, this usually gets the best birds and avoids the squatters and neer do well and pesky blackbirds.

Gourds have remained popular since INDIAN times, today we may like to use them for storing urine or selling salves at the swap, meet, but they are equally good as martin houses, which will keep your skeeter population down to a minimum, also they can last for 30 years or more.  Jay's momma used to fill em up with honey and beat snakes to death with them,

Now, after Gourds, the people of earth invented canned food, they did this initially to fight scurvy,  scurvy was thought to come from eating too much-dried meat.  A crafty Brit names Brian Donkin invented the can, and the process of canning food, He called it Donk-can's put the donk was dropped and they became known as cans almost immediately. The sick and infirm were strangely attracted to the canned food and the nurses loved the fact that the dirty workers in the kitchen were unable to touch the food until it was time to prepare it.

The can opener was a welcome symbol of progress and an important tool that helped to keep the dirty worker's hands away from the pure food inside.

They initially wanted to market it to convalescent homes as the canned meat was thought to be a wonderful restorative to those suffering from consumption, but a British naval officer was visiting one of the homes and fell in love with the taste of the potted meat,  He thought it would cure scurvy, and he bought about 300 cans for the navy to try out, it wasn't long before they were canning just about everything you can think of, canned milk, vegetables, blood, and the popularity of cans meant that women had time to organize and march for the right to vote, which lead to prohibition of alcohol, but then evened out and ended up a being a good thing for everyone.  One of the less understood repercussions of canned food, was package design,

before cans, package design was limited to crates and bushels, and barrels and these were often completed without color or printing.  Before canned food, sardines were an extremely hard sell and even when they were sold, the bags that they came in almost always smelled awful from decay and bacteria. 

Designs before cans were merely burned into the surface of the barrel, so canned foods, started the modern graphic design industry as well.  The popularity of canned food let to bright and colorful package design, as well as the creation of sparkly cartoon characters to adorn the cans, Tennesee turtle snap peas, Rowdy Raccoons potted meat products, Snarky the seal tunafish, Mr. Reindeers canned jello treats, honest injun canned corn and Pistol Pete's polish sausage in a can were all created during this time frame.  Some people speculate that early electrification efforts would not have enjoyed such quick uptake if not for the need to power electric can openers, which were notoriously difficult to use without electricity.

Steve Jobs was famous for saying that Packing itself could become theatre. Everyone thought he was an idiot for saying this in his high school drama class, but only a few decades later, he would make them eat their words out of the polished gourd of Apple computer, where he finessed his dream of bringing theatricality to packaging.  Steve had designed the box for the first apple computer before work began on the motherboard. He understood what people really wanted from their computers before they did. My cousin found a box for an Apple Macintosh color computer and he would sit inside that box for hours, He never had a computer, but he loved that box, even now years later, he keeps the box next to his bed and uses it to keep his dirty clothes from pilling up on the floor. One of the interesting elements of early Apple packaging was the inclusion of stickers. This use of packaging as extended branding was a very effective form of advertising for Apple. The logo meant that you part of a special tribe and was seen as a badge of honor among the gay young men who displayed it on their cars.

Packaging can be used to trick people as well, like lipstick on a pig, it can make broken glass into diamonds, and chocolate milk into Chardonnay. Packaging can be bought at the hardware store, or at the local package store, it is amazing how a simple paper bag, can make a drunk look like an upstanding citizen.  These paper bags contain all manner of mysteries. My uncle Dewayne, for instance, used to know a black man that would buy warts from people using paper bags. The main method consisted of a symbolic exchange of currency, and the application of a spell to the bag, and then the placement of the bag along the side of a road or in a parking lot, when some person in the future, would look in the bag, the wart would leave the body of one person, and join the body of another, he also sold yellow root, and peanuts, both of which were also sold in paper bags.

most of us can relate to using paper bags as everything from book covers to specialty breathing apparatus for the cure of hick-ups, or hyperventilation, they serve us in so many ways. I had a relative that used to use staple them to her walls to create the look of castle stones on her walls. One thing is for sure, no one in their right mind would through away a paper bag when we were growing up, they were just too damn useful.  Jay would take them out in the field and stand in them to help keep the mosquitos off of his ankles, paper bags can be very effective at blocking insects, the fibers that make up the bag act just like a candles wick for the poisons and chemicals that you soak them with. 

Many religions that celebrate moon bathing create their own branded bags for the purpose, in the early days of the KKK, paper bags were used instead of the familiar white fabric hood, this became so popular during the vaudeville era, that it birthed the unknown comic gag, his jokes, and adventures on stage were legendary on the dixie and chitlin circuits. It burnt an indelible image into the minds of generations and even now, the paper bag on the head remains a popular costume for children during Halloween.

Musk oil during the 1970's disco era, broke the glass ceiling on phallic perfume bottle shapes, Macho Musk oil by Faberge came in a striking penis and balls design that penetrated

the public consciousness with its raging shape and smell. Meanwhile, Jovan explored themes in orange sexuality with their daring use of lower case lettering and metallic accents.

The sexuality of packaging was further explored in the 80's by the Compact Disc Long box. The long box worked well with the existing store displays that were accustomed to holding LP records of the same height, but Compact Disc's had a secret dual use, that was quickly discovered by hip kids.  Spinal tap took things to new lengths with their extra long long box, which measures an impressive 18' inches when fully erect.  Despite the discovery by some youth of the utility of storing weed in the extra-sized long boxes, they were a passing fad and were discontinued as most everyone thought they were absurd.  Thankfully the fas passed by and we were left with the CD jewel box, It was a masterstroke of package design.  The ability to hold a little booklet in the cover, and shortly thereafter the discovery of clear or translucent spindle flats amazed consumers. They wondered how is it possible that someone developed a case that is even more prone to breakage than that of compact cassettes. Was it material science or alien technology that gave us those breakable hinges?  No one ever figured it out, but perhaps that was only because of the threat of the dreaded all paper digipack, it was perhaps the ultimate insult. 

Rolling Stone magazine attempted to infiltrate the record labels and understand how all of this came about, but each writer that tried disappeared and were remembered only by the desperate pleas for information about their whereabouts on the milk cartoons of the early 1990's.

I grew up with paper milk cartons. My uncle Todd made a boat out of milk cartoons after drawing inspiration from the Blue Marble television program from ITT and an article in National Geographic World magazine.  I drank out of tiny little square milk cartoons as early as age 6. They were devilishly difficult to open, and you could, if not careful, end up mangling the entire package and spilling all of the milk attempting to open them. I knew kids that simply gave up and just cried when it proved impossible to open the milk. Teachers would cautiously approach the cartoon with scissors if thing deteriorated to that point.

It wasn't until supercomputers were in the petaflop range that Tetrapak industries discovered how to place a screw top access port on the paper milk carton. Their Aseptic processing method sterilizing the milk, as well as the packaging. Their effects on supply chain are considered one of the seven marvels of modern engineering.  78 billion liters of milk are sold each year in Tetrapak brand packaging. Thanks to their ability to preserve milk, it is now possible to ship and store without refrigeration milk for millions of African school children. The nutrition from this milk is having a global impact as, just as it did with the white man, milk is helping to raise the IQ of children around the world.

Milk isn't the only thing sold in tetrapaks, the protein rich water from almonds and soybeans are sold in them as well. Since the flavored water is not really milk, it must be treated with seaweed extract and colored with white colorants to gain the look and feel of actual milk. Even though soybeans cause the death and destruction of millions of small mammals and the larger mammals that hunt them, some people consider them more human, I guess it is called plausable deniability.  Humans never cease to amaze me, they are indeed a strange creature, but it makes them feel better, so that perhaps is the real magic of milk cartoons.  I suppose they mean more to me than most people, as I will always remember the death of my

uncle Todd, when he drowned in the fish pond, on his raft made of milk cartoons.